MattHooper
Master Contributor
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There was some interesting stuff in this post. Which of course ended up being leveraged for the typical anti vinyl rant.
So in the interest of balance….
And yet vinyl can often sound fantastic. Which goes to show that talk of mere technological differences doesn’t always accurately portray real world differences.
I appreciate that you were talking about technical best case scenarios for vinyl.
But my point is you don’t even need best case scenarios for vinyl to sound really good.
My vinyl collection comprises, new vinyl and plenty of old secondhand vinyl, and excellent sound can be heard across all of those. And as I’ve said many times before, I find some claims of recognize to be exaggerated as I rarely hear noise while the music is actually playing on a track.
More typical exaggeration. See above: you don’t need perfect scenarios or heroic efforts in creating vinyl records in order to produce very good sound quality. In fact there have been digital versus vinyl sound files posted on this forum, where the digital record was not the subject of any heroic efforts, and differences can be perceived, they were overall fairly subtle. So this gulf between heaven and Hell is a rather ridiculous characterization.
That is true for a great many music listeners whether their source is digital or vinyl! You are missing out some key aspects of the listening experience.
But of course the typical person buying a $150 Crosley ISN’T big on “sound quality.” They are typically teenagers who just want to spin some records. Whereas you seem to be comparing that crowd to some undescribed person listening to digital sources and some idealized way that will always trounce vinyl! That’s just not apples to apples. The vast majority listening to digital sources like streaming also don’t have “ overall sound quality as a priority.”
My wife loves music, but she listens to most of her music through the crappy speakers of her Apple laptop, and through our colored-sounding kitchen smart speaker! That goes for plenty of people who listen to digital sources.
See that’s a thing that you’re an analysis is really missing. You talk about all the liabilities of vinyl, and then imply that simply listening to digital gets you that “ far more accurate to the master listening experience.” But you aren’t accounting for how people actually listen!
What is the point of having a far more accurate digital signal if your playback system is not very accurate? Like so many peoples playback system. And a further question could be asked: what does it matter if your digital signal produces more accurate detail from the master recording, if the way you were listening is not about caring about that detail, or even conducive to hearing or concentrating on that detail??
Again, many people just listen to their music as background these days to other activities. They’re not concentrating on all these fine points of accurate detail about the master.
My wife certainly isn’t as she’s cooking or surfing the web while her music plays on the Smart speaker. People listen in their cars (we will cover up plenty of detail), while walking or jogging or working out at the gym, doing homework or studying in the university cafeteria, or while they are on transit, or countless other ways in which the music tends to be listened as some background accompaniment. So if you’re going to talk about real world, listening scenarios with vinyl, you have to also talk about that with digital. And digital has actually made it easier to make music more background and an accompaniment to other activities, which means all that wonderful accuracy is not necessarily getting the attention that makes it a really big deal!
So take a scenario of someone doing the dishes or cooking in the kitchen while their music plays on their smart speaker accompanying that activity. They are splitting their attention.
Compare that to someone with even a modest turntable set up, playing the record sitting to listen directly to the tracks. Who is going to be perceiving more about the music and recording? I suggest it was the dedicated listener. The small differences sonically between the digital source listened to in a kitchen, vs a record on a modest record player, will be swamped by the difference in attention paid to the recording/music.
This is why so many people who’ve gotten into vinyl report more satisfying listening, and musical experiences, paying attention and hearing things that they hadn’t heard when imbibing via digital streaming, which did not encourage such direct attention. (None of that means that the same amount of satisfaction can’t be gotten from digital, of course to anybody who dedicates they’re listening to digital! The point is we have to look at how people are actually listening and how that affects the experience).
You are in no position to tell anybody how into the music or not they are. Presumptions based on their audio equipment included.
It’s just as easy to point out that anybody spending as much time on an audio gear forum as we do isn’t “all about the music.” And has an audio gear fetish.
This is yet again audiophile virtue signalling and a type of vanity:
“ We all know that the highest virtue is to be All About The Music, so I’ll construct an argument to justify my own choice which implies I am in that virtuous category, and Those Other Audiophiles are stuck in a cycle of gear, fetish and obsession that has nothing to do with music.”
Again, nobody’s in a position to tell anybody else what to do to be fully into the music.
My choice is no better than yours, and yours no better than mine.
So in the interest of balance….
And yet vinyl can often sound fantastic. Which goes to show that talk of mere technological differences doesn’t always accurately portray real world differences.
I appreciate that you were talking about technical best case scenarios for vinyl.
But my point is you don’t even need best case scenarios for vinyl to sound really good.
My vinyl collection comprises, new vinyl and plenty of old secondhand vinyl, and excellent sound can be heard across all of those. And as I’ve said many times before, I find some claims of recognize to be exaggerated as I rarely hear noise while the music is actually playing on a track.
More typical exaggeration. See above: you don’t need perfect scenarios or heroic efforts in creating vinyl records in order to produce very good sound quality. In fact there have been digital versus vinyl sound files posted on this forum, where the digital record was not the subject of any heroic efforts, and differences can be perceived, they were overall fairly subtle. So this gulf between heaven and Hell is a rather ridiculous characterization.
That is true for a great many music listeners whether their source is digital or vinyl! You are missing out some key aspects of the listening experience.
But of course the typical person buying a $150 Crosley ISN’T big on “sound quality.” They are typically teenagers who just want to spin some records. Whereas you seem to be comparing that crowd to some undescribed person listening to digital sources and some idealized way that will always trounce vinyl! That’s just not apples to apples. The vast majority listening to digital sources like streaming also don’t have “ overall sound quality as a priority.”
My wife loves music, but she listens to most of her music through the crappy speakers of her Apple laptop, and through our colored-sounding kitchen smart speaker! That goes for plenty of people who listen to digital sources.
See that’s a thing that you’re an analysis is really missing. You talk about all the liabilities of vinyl, and then imply that simply listening to digital gets you that “ far more accurate to the master listening experience.” But you aren’t accounting for how people actually listen!
What is the point of having a far more accurate digital signal if your playback system is not very accurate? Like so many peoples playback system. And a further question could be asked: what does it matter if your digital signal produces more accurate detail from the master recording, if the way you were listening is not about caring about that detail, or even conducive to hearing or concentrating on that detail??
Again, many people just listen to their music as background these days to other activities. They’re not concentrating on all these fine points of accurate detail about the master.
My wife certainly isn’t as she’s cooking or surfing the web while her music plays on the Smart speaker. People listen in their cars (we will cover up plenty of detail), while walking or jogging or working out at the gym, doing homework or studying in the university cafeteria, or while they are on transit, or countless other ways in which the music tends to be listened as some background accompaniment. So if you’re going to talk about real world, listening scenarios with vinyl, you have to also talk about that with digital. And digital has actually made it easier to make music more background and an accompaniment to other activities, which means all that wonderful accuracy is not necessarily getting the attention that makes it a really big deal!
So take a scenario of someone doing the dishes or cooking in the kitchen while their music plays on their smart speaker accompanying that activity. They are splitting their attention.
Compare that to someone with even a modest turntable set up, playing the record sitting to listen directly to the tracks. Who is going to be perceiving more about the music and recording? I suggest it was the dedicated listener. The small differences sonically between the digital source listened to in a kitchen, vs a record on a modest record player, will be swamped by the difference in attention paid to the recording/music.
This is why so many people who’ve gotten into vinyl report more satisfying listening, and musical experiences, paying attention and hearing things that they hadn’t heard when imbibing via digital streaming, which did not encourage such direct attention. (None of that means that the same amount of satisfaction can’t be gotten from digital, of course to anybody who dedicates they’re listening to digital! The point is we have to look at how people are actually listening and how that affects the experience).
You are in no position to tell anybody how into the music or not they are. Presumptions based on their audio equipment included.
It’s just as easy to point out that anybody spending as much time on an audio gear forum as we do isn’t “all about the music.” And has an audio gear fetish.
This is yet again audiophile virtue signalling and a type of vanity:
“ We all know that the highest virtue is to be All About The Music, so I’ll construct an argument to justify my own choice which implies I am in that virtuous category, and Those Other Audiophiles are stuck in a cycle of gear, fetish and obsession that has nothing to do with music.”
Again, nobody’s in a position to tell anybody else what to do to be fully into the music.
My choice is no better than yours, and yours no better than mine.
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